Capacity & process issues - Update

We are discussing in various threads a series of issues related to capacity, and to the need to refactor our processes to better handle our current size. While I’m catching up on everything as I come back from vacation, I thought it useful to recap here the current and next steps. This helps me to think about it, and check whether I’m missing anything - tell me if I do.

  • First, on the root issue of capacity, the recruitment managers and the recruitment process seem to produce a good stream of newcomers currently. We have had 6 newcomers added over the last month, though we’ll still need to see how many core team confirmation they turn into. In the meantime, we have paused accepting new projects.

  • To confirm of newcomers faster, @braden is implementing a new evaluation/trial period process

  • There is also an overhead issue with our current processes - so we are doing a spring clean to lean and refactor them.

    • We’ll review the information that will come out of the survey @Ali has put out at Team Survey - Pain Points
    • I’ll put a task in the upcoming sprint for the whole team to decide on the simplifications for the main pain points
    • @tikr and I will work out his project manager tasks for the upcoming sprint, including one to make proposals on process simplification - @tikr how much time can you dedicate to these tasks in the upcoming sprint?
    • Given the size of the work and the urgency, it will have to be a team effort – but since it’s one with an immediate return we all have to benefit from, it should hopefully work out? This could help implementing @tikr ideas on simplification, including the potential merge of the epic & sustainability manager roles. I’ll also take one of the simplification tasks, along with anyone else willing to help.
      => Discussion about overhead & mention of spring clean
  • Talking about project management, we have an issue in some cases of not having enough people to handle all the roles. It’s important that the cell management roles remain voluntary, it can easily be very draining to do something we’re not interested in.

    • I’ve suggested experimenting with adding dedicated project managers, who would be able to take on some of those roles when necessary, and be delegated project management work to. They wouldn’t be cell leads, but could take on some of the cell management roles when nobody from the cell would want to take one – they would just only take one at a time.
  • Defining this would be part of the role definition work @tikr would do, with the goal of producing a role definition we can recruit for: if the test is positive based the on the experience with @tikr fulfilling it, we’ll then recruit to add more project managers to the team, available to the cells to fill roles.

  • Cell merge of Serenity and Falcon? See the discussion started by @jill at https://forum.opencraft.com/t/cell-merge-serenity-falcon/1132

  • Issue with cross cell epics and sustainability planning. (Serenity had capacity to do some internal work, but no sustainability % to take it on. Falcon had sustainability to spare, but no capacity.) We need a solution for this, which is represented in our policies, and preferably in our tools.

At a high level, anything else we need to take care of first? And how?

[ Ticket to log time reading up & answering ]

5 Likes

I believe there is one more.

I’m hoping the new role proposition would help clarify the need for separating working on solutions to developer success issues from client specific work.

I know @tikr’s role is somewhat that, especially by starting off redefining some of our main processes.

However, we do need someone whose priority is the developer’s success. A person dedicated to the developer’s health can not only identify issues from the sprint bi-weekly checkup, but also address those problems before such a critical point is reached.

I am aware that you haven’t had the chance to go over that proposition, yet. Take your time. I just wanted to mention briefly what I think we should also focus on taking care of.

3 Likes

Welcome back @antoviaque!

I hope you had an amazing time and a well-deserved break. I’m looking forward to seeing some photos of Alaska soon. :mountain_snow: :evergreen_tree:

The team still has until 21 September to complete the survey. I have scheduled time after that date to go through everyone’s feedback and come up with a good way to present the findings to the team (if the TypeForm summary isn’t intuitive enough). I know not everyone has access to OpenCraft’s Typeform account, but I’m sure I can export the results and put them into a format that is easy to digest. I’ll see what will work best when I get there.

You can take a sneak peek at the responses here in the meantime if you have access to the Typeform account.

@nizar Thanks for the proposal! I have created Log in - OpenCraft to review it in an upcoming sprint.

Thanks! And right, I need to post some pictures :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Thanks for the details! Sounds good. I was able to access the results - hopefully at least everyone from OpenCraft do too through Vault? If not then it would be worth sharing the TypeForm credentials more widely. For the publication, it can then wait for the final results next week.

1 Like

@antoviaque Thanks for the recap! One item that might be worth adding is @jill’s proposal to reunite Serenity and Falcon; we’ll still need to decide whether this is something to move forward with but it’s related to capacity so it would make sense to list it above.

That sounds great :+1:

As things currently stand, not much. But I posted a proposal that would help me dedicate more time over on the related sprint retrospective thread, see this comment.

I’ve been thinking a bit about dependencies between upcoming tasks related to process simplification. Some steps/decisions will depend on the results from @Ali’s survey; but merging epic and sustainability management has come up a few times now without anyone actively opposing, so I think it’s fine to decouple the research for that from reviewing the survey.

The same probably goes for @braden’s task about analyzing community engagement roles, MNG-2415 :slight_smile:

:+1:

@Ali For planning purposes, do you have a rough idea about when you’d have the results ready to present the team (Sprint 256a vs 256b)?

@tikr Sounds good, thanks!

Good point for the cell merge, I’m adding it to the initial post in this thread. And as discussed in another thread, I’m good with the switch you suggested to be able to take on the role merge. I let you create the task on this?

On my side I have created a few tasks:

2 Likes

We also have this issue with cross cell epics and sustainability planning. In the above case, Serenity had capacity to do some internal work, but no sustainability % to take it on. Falcon had sustainability to spare, but no capacity.

We need a solution for this, which is represented in our policies, and preferably in our tools.

3 Likes

Hi @tikr

I am going to get to work on this as soon as the new sprint starts, so the feedback will be ready during 256a. I will keep in touch to let you know my progress. :eyeglasses:

2 Likes

@jill Good point, this has generated a lot of back and forth when trying to schedule epics - I’ll add it to the list above too. Would you mind creating a ticket for it in the spring clean epic? @tikr given that this sits right in the middle of the epic planning and sustainability responsibilities, which you’re dealing a lot with, is this a ticket you would be able to take on? Maybe with you as a reviewer @jill? I would take a second review on this ticket.

1 Like

@antoviaque Thanks for confirming! I created SE-4852 and put it into next sprint. (Still need to flesh out the description.)

@jill @antoviaque Yep, I can take a ticket for this. (It has actually been on my list of things to look into in the context of epic planning and sustainability for a while…) We can schedule it for a future sprint. Considering the current capacity situation I don’t think we’ll run into a similar situation again in the short term.

@Ali Great! :rocket:

2 Likes

Yep, I’ll create a ticket for that before the end of sprint 255.

2 Likes

Hi @tikr,

I started work on the document of the survey feedback today, so I have a better idea of how much work is required. I’m still on track to finish it during 256a, but it will likely only be ready on Thursday or Friday (I think there are still a couple of people who haven’t completed the survey yet anyway).

There are a few tricky things I need to work out; the survey was edited mid-way (meaning results from 2 versions of the Typeform survey need to be merged); I messed up the logic for one of the questions, so need to do some corrections there; I also need to factor in some answers that were given on the forum as opposed to in the survey. But I’m getting there! :muscle: I’ll let you know when the results are ready.

FYI @antoviaque

1 Like

@Ali Thanks for the update. To give time to review the results and be able to prepare the next steps, including a follow-up survey to be posted on Monday, would you be able to send those on Thursday? This way I’ll schedule time for this on Friday.

I’ve also pinged the people who still need to answer the survey - which you can close at the end of the day today to allow you to work on the final data tomorrow, since that’s a clear deadline for it.

Sure @antoviaque. I’ll have it ready for you by the end of the day on Thursday (or earlier if things go smoothly). :+1:

Thanks for pinging everyone who has yet to answer the survey. By my count, we’re hoping for a total of 26 submissions (there have been 21 so far). Does that sound about right?

@Ali I haven’t re-counted, but that does sound about right yes. Looks like we ended up with 24 of them.

1 Like

Thanks for the heads-up @Ali :slight_smile:

1 Like

@tikr @antoviaque In case you miss my post of the other thread, here are the survey results. Let me know if you have any questions :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

It’s really annoying that we have these issues. Cells were supposed to help things, but they seem to be getting in the way more than ever these days.

I’ve been on the edge of my seat for a few weeks now, with all that’s happening. But before going on my weekend, I just wanted to thank @antoviaque for his restless focus on finding solutions for a series of important issues (capacity, metawork, roles, an important discussion about wages, etc.). From what I’m seeing, we’re taking the right steps to alleviate our main concerns. This includes team members not wanting to leave anymore, which is nothing short of amazing. I also want to express my gratitude to this awesome team, who are working their asses off every day to make this company better. We’re not out of the woods yet, but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now :slight_smile:

8 Likes

@gabriel Thank you for the kind words! I echo yours for the whole team – these issues and discussions aren’t easy to face. Discussing in a constructive way, finding solutions and compromises, takes effort.

On that point, I have been impressed by the work done on the tickets mentioned in this thread – the solutions found and the quality of the pull requests is impressive. We’ll need to see if that enough, but in any case if I had attempted to do this work myself, it would have taken weeks or maybe months to do this on my own, to get to a result that probably wouldn’t be nearly as good as what we have come up with all together now. And knowing we could already figure out all these changes, and have many changes ready to be merged, I already sleep a bit better for it. :slight_smile:

So, kudos! :+1:

6 Likes